Being truly alive is a gift so extravagantly rich and wonderful that it can’t even be meaningfully contrasted with simply not being dead.
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
An Open Table where Love knows no borders
Sermons on Abundance (Page 2)
If we construct our identity around a pursuit of social esteem, we will degrade our true selves, but if we model ourselves on the generosity of God, we will find true life where few look for it.
Because of God’s extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.
Because of God’s abundance, God’s never-ending supply of extravagant and eternal generosity, we are raised out of death and into God’s life: a life of gratitude, of loving, of belonging, out of which flows a life of service and a burning desire to participate in God’s passionate concern for the world.
Our lives are gift: a gift from abundance, a gift to be shared, a gift given for the life of the world, a gift we can give away because we are confident that the eternal source of life, the God who promises healing and freedom, will always replenish us.
Jesus calls us in a new direction, full of strangers and dangers and turmoil and wonder. And in that vision of a new way, a new future leaping with silvery hope, we will find the courage to leave everything.
It is as members of the body that you are given the gifts that are needed for this body to serve in this time and this place.
Jesus rejects the opportunity to fulfil our hopes and expectations in order that he might give us more than we thought possible.
With every step we take towards God’s economy, we will become more powerful in our witness to God’s saving action and love for the world, and be filled ever more deeply with God’s good grace.
Jesus leads us into a joyous and healthy way of living that avoids both constricting legalism and destructive libertarianism.
God’s grace is so extravagant that it will offend us as long as we are measuring our worth in comparison to others.
God does not judge people’s capacity to respond and focus love and care only on the productive, but gives gifts with wanton freedom and extravagance and calls us to do the same.
Jesus probably won’t meet our expectations, but will instead set out to convert our expectations and lead us into a new world that exceeds anything we could have expected.
God calls us to live exuberantly, generously reflecting the good things God has done and becoming model citizens in the reign of God.
We want to be rewarded as we think we deserve, but God wants to give us everything.
God gives extravagantly and abundantly, but in order to experience it, we need to begin sharing it.
In the birth of the baby we see the presence of God in smallness and obscurity, enabling us to see that small beginnings are no obstacle to big visions of the reign of justice and peace and freedom.
Jesus says to each one of us “I am the new wine. Feed on me”.
Jesus reveals that God is a God of abundance who will lovingly provide plenty for all, but the common perception of scarcity easily corrupts us and leads to treachery and abuse.
The wilderness can seem harsh and threatening, but God is there, ready to nourish us with the bread of heaven.